Last week the founder of the Open Society Foundations, George Soros, spoke to a senior gathering of UK MPs and Peers at a reception in the House of Commons about the importance of oil and mining transparency

40 countries are able to hide corrupt spending from the public

Forty of the 94 countries in which access to government budget information was carefully evaluated by the "International Budget Partnership’s (IBP)" "_Open Budget Survey 2010_" were found to provide such minimal information to the public that the country’s governments are able to hide unpopular, wasteful, and corrupt spending.